Kurt Angle was nearly The Marine.
...on the big screen.
The WWE and IMPACT Wrestling Hall of Fame legend revealed plans for him to be featured in the WWE Studios film during a recent episode of his podcast.
While talking on "The Kurt Angle Show," the Olympic gold medalist revealed that the movie was initially offered to "Stone Cold" Steve Austin, who turned it down, and was then offered to him before John Cena ended up in the role.
Featured below is an excerpt from the show where he tells the story.
“The Marine was supposed to be my movie. What happened was Stone Cold Steve Austin was told that he was going to do The Marine, the movie, the very first WWE film. Steve left the company so Vince gave the movie to me. I had it and they weren’t sure when they were going to film it. A year went by and then Vince came to me and said, ‘Hey, listen, I want to give that Marine movie to John Cena.’ I was like, ‘Why?’ He said, ‘Well, he’s becoming an upcoming star. I think this is the right time for him to do a movie.’ I said, ‘Vince, listen, that’s cool. You know, I’m happy for John. It’s great that he’s going to do this movie, but he really needs to be in the ring working and I’m injured. I need to take time off of wrestling. I would love to take six months off and do a movie. That’d be great.’”
“He said, ‘Well, I already made up my mind.’ I wasn’t mad at John. I was mad at Vince. He just took the movie away from me because this new kid came in and, you know, made a huge impact. I made a huge impact too. So I wasn’t sure why that happened. It actually was the beginning of the end for me for WWE. After that is when things started going downhill. About a year or two later, that’s when I left the company.”
Check out the complete episode of the show at AdFreeShows.com. H/T to WrestlingNews.co for transcribing the above quotes.
